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The second move of the machine is to have a persona, or personality. the one everyone knows.
Independent, strong willed, smart, knowledgeable, pretty, nice, creative. all lies.
You paint those over everything. Over everything to hide that you are not that. Hiding that you are a real person suffering from no freedom to be yourself. You have no freedom to be any way you want to be. Instead you have to be nice. Instead you have to be smart, you have to be independent. Or maybe you have to be a superwoman.
This second move was born out of incidents where you fell short of being a match to life. From incidents where you saved the day.
Robin Williams’ machine, the clown machine, ultimately killed him. He was tongue tied, lonely, sad, and an introvert underneath the loud, funny, hyper person he invented to survive as a child.
But your survival tools become a prison, and cause untold sufferings.One of my students decided that the way to make it through life is to be distant, self-protecting, and to keep everyone at arm’s length. As an adult, a mother and grandmother, she is suffering from lack of intimacy, lack of closeness.
Her ‘survival suit’ is protecting her from what she wants most in life. Meaningful close relationships.
The third move is the chattering, judgmental mind with its accompanying emotions and feelings.
This is also a machine, and you have been trying to control it, turn it into your slave, but the more you are fighting it, the more you are trying to control it, the worse you feel, the worse your life becomes.
I accidentally stumbled onto the solution: most thoughts and feelings I experience are not mine, they come from outside.
When I realized that, I started a process that became the solution to the busy mind and ravaging feelings: I managed to create a distance, and I managed thus to give them room to roam, to do what they do, without being much bothered by them.
I found out that a group of scientists created a psychological training program to accomplish the same. They call it ACT.
I have been studying it, and I may teach it, adding to it what only an empath can add: monitoring your behavior, your inner behavior, and feedback, give you personalized strategies. invaluable. And possibly energetic support to develop the capacities faster than you would without it.
The capacities you need for winning in life in spite of the machine
The capacities this ACT method requires of you are allowing, accepting, embracing, making room, stop arguing, stop fighting, stop fixing. drop it or at least curtail it. It’s your behavior and you have control over it.
With practice you can become masterful at accepting, embracing, making room for your thoughts and feelings. And when you become any good at it, you will have time and energy. Time and energy to do something with your life. To do something meaningful, something that you can be proud of. To make your life count. And to be about more than just surviving life.
The same capacities also work miracles in your life.
If the young girl had those capacities, she would have allowed me to tell her how I see her, and either just give that feedback room, or maybe even choose if it is helpful or not.
Instead she needed to attack them, and attack me.
Not a happy life maker, if you ask me. Would you agree?
